What's Inside the HTC Vive?

The HTC Vive is a wonderful—if flawed — piece of VR hardware. Now iFixit has shown us exactly what lurks inside it.

iFixit has torn apart HTC’s VR rig to see what makes it arguably one of the more advanced consumer electronics gadgets you can buy right now. In fact, the team tore apart the headset, controllers, and Lighthouse IR base stations that it uses too. (A suite of peripherals that actually take a long while to set up.)

Perhaps the most impressive thing to fall out of the casing is sensors — lots and lots of sensors. iFixit reports that there are “32 individually numbered sensors on the headset and 24 on each controller”. That’s a lot of sensing, and no doubt contributes greatly to the Vive’s ability to immerse. And, of course, there’s no shortage of ribbon cables connecting many of its IR sensors — scattered across the perimeter of the casing — which allow it detect its place in the world.

Elsewhere, the device’s displays measure just over 10 centimetres on the diagonal, providing a pixel density of 447 ppi. iFixit also discovers that the Vive has a simple contoured lens, unlike the Rift which uses a series of hybrid lenses. That means there’s an intricate system of four cogs, which the headset requires to move the lens toward and away from the eye to control focus.

The guys at iFixit it even reckon it’s fairly easy to repair, but you are a braver soul than I if you plan to buy and take apart this thing. You can read the full teardown over at iFixit. [iFixit]